Bayer’s book La Patagonia Rebelde (The
Rebellious Patagonia) is about the strikes of 1921-1922
in Argentina’s far south, where about 1500 Patagonian
workers were murdered by the Argentinean Army. It was banned
in 70s by the government and even publicly burned with other
subversive books.

From the Film Rebellious
Patagonia, by Héctor Olivera

Severino
di Giovanni

Severino
di Giovanni's Italo-Argentinian anarchist group first
attacked North American establishments with bombs at the time
of the murder of Sacco and Vanzetti, and then Fascist Italian
firms. At the same time the group carried out several hold-ups
to finance a secret press which in 1930 was to publish two
volumes of 'Social Writings' by Elisee Reclus in Italian. (For
more information see here)

Severino
Di Giovanni

Severino
Di Giovanni

Josefina
Scarfo

Dictatorship
in Argentina

In a coup on March 24,
1976, a military junta seized power in Argentina and went on
a campaign to wipe out left-wing terrorism with terror far
worse than the one they were combating. Between 1976 and
1983 - under military rule - thousands of people, most of
them dissidents and innocent civilians unconnected with
terrorism, were arrested and then vanished without a trace.
In 1983, after democracy was restored, a national commission
was appointed to investigate the fate of the disappeared.
Its report revealed the systematic abductions of men, women,
and children, the existence of about 340 well organized
secret detention centers, and the methodic use of torture
and murder. Records of the atrocities were destroyed by the
military. The disappeared have not been heard of to this
day.

Mothers
of the Disappeared

A
group of mothers who began demonstrating in the Plaza de Mayo,
demanding that the government give them answers as to where their
children were. Bayer is very involved with this
group.

I am
with Osvaldo Bayer in his austere study in the residential
district of Belgrano in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. As
would have happened normally, Bayer himself receives the
inconvenient visit with his usual friendliness. Exile has cut
his life in two. Now he has a home in Germany, where his
companion, children and grandchildren await him. Far away,
however, in this Buenos Aires, is where he spends the majority
of his life. As always when in Buenos Aires, Bayer is at home
alone. But this tranquility is an illusion; Bayer’s days in
this city are incredibly fatiguing, with lectures, talks and
invitations to events and meetings throughout Argentina. The
Department of Human Rights founded by him in the School of
Philosophy and Humanities of the University of Buenos Aires,
although abandoned by him only last year, has not been able to
do without him. I had mentioned to him by telephone that I
wanted him to tell me something about the ´30s and the
activities of the FACA (Federación
Anarquista Comunista Argentina) and Bayer upon receiving me bypasses the
question

But
you’re asking me about the ´30s, I don’t know anything
about the anarchism of the ´30s...”

Obviously
not! How old were you at that time, ten?

Well
look, in 1940 I was thirteen. My contact with anarchism started
in the ´60s, when the building was in Humberto Primo Street1
with all the old guys, who died one by one…

Well it wasn’t really called the FACA. It
was called the FLA(Federación Libertaria
Argentina,3 and they remembered the FACA as something
of the remote past. Shortly we had to move because of the
continuation of 9th July Avenue4 to Brazil Street [the present
location of the FLA], premises which I have known since their
birth.

I wanted
to ask you about your book Severino Di Giovanni. Was it the
first militant activity of anarchism in Argentina that you
became acquainted with?

Yes,
absolutely. It was the first, then came Los Anarquistas
Expropiadores [The Expropriator Anarchists]. I started in the
year’s ´65 and ´66, and I had the luck that, except for
those killed by the police, the majority of the compañeros of
Severino’s group were still living. And those that belonged to
groups hostile to Severino, too, like Abad de Santillán, for
example. And the men who had founded La Antorcha in the early ´20s,
they were all living, and a few of the memories were still
alive, too. In fact, so many were that they didn’t like it at
all that I was dedicating time to Severino Di Giovanni, who was
an enemy. They still expressed solidarity with López Arango6and his compañero, Diego Abad de Santillán. Santillán
did every thing possible to stop me from writing this book. The
wounds were still very much open and there was a lot of hate
involved. For them Severino was the antithesis of anarchism, not
only him, but the people who surrounded him too.

But
amongst them there were thoroughly proven anarchists like Morán7...

Like
Morán, yes, doubtlessly... But Severino got the full brunt of
Santillán´s hate. He made statements to me about Severino,
that I later proved to be false. On the other hand there were
others who worked in La Antorcha and appreciated him very much,
such as Alberto Bianchi(8). For me Alberto Bianchi was one of
the most important fighters for this tendency, which, of course,
didn’t foresee that the FLA was going to turn into a place for
meetings and weekends. Then there were very valuable people, who
came from the FORA or the interior of the country, who met in
the FLA, like Borda, who was a great fighter, who was in La
Forestal,9 a quiet man, but who made it perfectly clear for me
that Severino had never betrayed the cause or any thing of the
sort. What happened is that Severino´s attacks were used by the
police to persecute anarchists who were militants at surface
level [with] the objective of criminalizing the entire
libertarian movement. And a lot of anarchists complained saying,
“...but Severino should’ve warned us...”, but Severino,
who was always running from the police, could never warn anybody
of anything. So that’s how I was able to reconstruct, bit by
bit, both of these tendencies. Those two tendencies of the ´20s
were really hard on each other.

No,
Fina didn’t want to receive me. She was tired of the
“crows”, the journalists who sought sensationalist material
and cops-and-robbers treatment of the case. But then, when the
first edition was published, when she saw that it was something
different, she phoned me and explained why she hadn’t received
me before. She was happy with the book because of how it handled
the love between Severino and her, but she wanted to know where
I’d found the material and the letters that I’d quoted. Of
course, I’d studied all of the material in the court records,
in the police records of the case, I’d done the entire
circuit, I’d visited the places they’d lived in, I’d even
arrived as far as the country-house in Burzaco where they lived
together and which was Severino´s last dwelling. She was a girl
of sixteen... She’s always denied it! She phoned me up and
said, “No Bayer, you have to make this correction in the book.
I wasn’t sixteen, I was seventeen...” What a difference! Of
course, being seventeen, she was a young lady, because the main
point of the press attack was that he was living with a minor.

So, you
wrote this book in the ´60s, but you were aware of the
Patagonia issue earlier...

Yes,
I already knew that topic, because my father was a history buff,
who had lived with my mother in Rio Gallegos11
during the entire strike. It interested him a lot and he collected
the workers’ leaflets and newspapers of the period. That way, I
had a lot of material as well as my father’s accounts.

No,
they moved to Neuquén13. What happened is my mother went to
Santa Fé, where her sisters lived, to have her last two
children. The eldest was born in Rio Gallegos, Franz, the
second, was born in Neuquén. Then they moved to Concepción del
Uruguay14 and I was born, but my mother went to Santa Fé to
have us. But I was conceived in Concepción del Uruguay! Imagine
that! [he laughs]…they decided to go to live in Tucumán.15
So, my first four years were spent in Tucumán and I still have
memories of when I was four. It’s incredible how I still
remember the carts loaded with sugar cane passing by.

But
when I was four, I went to live in Bernal en the Province of
Buenos Aires…when I was seven we came to live in Belgrano
[from suburban Buenos Aires, Bernal, to a residential district
in the City of Buenos Aires, Belgrano]. Then I lived here till I
got married.

How
did you take up contact with the libertarian movement?

Since
my student times in Germany, I’d been strongly attracted to
the libertarian movement. I’d read a lot. Over there I’d
become a militant of the Socialist Students’ League, who were
left-socialists, left of the social democrats. They had a very
libertarian tendency and there I read the classics. So, when I
came back from my studies in ´56, I already had a libertarian
posture. What happened is I wanted to enter the Socialist Party
here, but the internal disputes were so tremendous that they
didn’t accept me. The old guys who represented the right wing
of the party and feared the growth of the youth thought that
I’d come to break the voting tie in the committee to their
disadvantage, because the assembly of associates had to accept
me. I remember that assembly, it was pathetic! It embarrassed
me, because they tied twice or three times! And all I wanted was
to be a member. So, I thanked them, and good bye, never again,
... never again the Socialist Party! Then I started to go now
and then to the lectures at the Libertarian Federation in
Humberto Primo Street.

How
big of an influence did the FLA have in the social movement at
that time?

I’d
say very little, because peronism had completely defeated anarchism.
And anarchism had committed some grave errors. All the people who
were against Severino Di Giovanni when I started my research took
me to be an enemy. And there were those who had openly collaborated
with the “Libertadora.”16. Openly! So much so that some syndicates
[until that moment they were peronist] were taken by the marine
infantry. These syndicates held a banquet in the Libertarian Federation
for Admiral Rojas17....
Well, they
were ferociously anti-peronist and unbearably anti-communist. Furthermore,
I arrived there with my surname of German origin, and some said
that they had to check out if I was nazi or not. It was a really
shitty environment, controlled by the old guys, the old guys who
had lost to peronism.

You
have told me that you were once a sailor. When was that?

That
was before I went to study in Germany. I had to work to save for
my studies, and first I worked in an insurance agency belonging
to some Germans. My third job was in the merchant marine. One of
my brothers was an officer there, and he had me enter as an apprentice
commissary. The commissaries were the ones who did the administrative
paper pushing on the ships. But on the second day Captain Almirón
saw me and said, you’re not going to stay here doing numbers in
the office. Come to the bridge, You’re going to be an apprentice
helmsman. So, for six months I was an apprentice helmsman. We went
from Buenos Aires to Puerto Caballero to the North of Asunción along
the River Paraná. It was a very nice period, dangerous because the
crew was Paraguayan then. The Paraguayans and Correntinos18held shindigs on top of the barges with an accordion and
some played theharp19 really well and they danced all night long, those
nights of fullmoon
and heat. At the beginning I went but it was very dangerous because
Iwas the only pale
face there. I was going to have to close myself up in my cabin [he
laughs]. Those trips were really nice, until the Maritime Workers’
Strike was called because they wouldn’t accept Perón’s decree, by
which, I can’t remember, seven or eight percent of their earnings
were to be discounted for the Eva Perón Foundation [founded by Eva
Peron to give money to the poor]. So the Maritime Workers said “no”.
The Maritime Workers and the Railway Workers were the only unions
still in the hands of the socialists and the anarchists. Well, the
anarchists still had influence within the sailors union, not amongst
the leaders but amongst the rank and file members, amongst the mechanics.
I attended the assembly where the automatic discount was rejected
- it was to be voluntary, he who wanted to donate, should donate.
We embarked upon the steamer Madrid, and the strike started before
we arrived in Rosario.20 So, I said to the captain, “O.K., I’m
on strike”, and he answered, “You’re not going to fool around, you’re
not going to strike if no one’s going to stop working here”. “What
do you mean, nobody’s going to stop working - we have to follow
the decisions of the assembly?” “Look, not one Paraguayan or Correntino’s
going to stop working here”. And that’s the way it was, I was the
only striker on the steamer Madrid, and of course when we arrived
in Rosario, they disembarked me and told the Coast Guard that I
was a striker. It was 2 o’clock in the morning. A jeep came to pick
me up and took me to the Coast Guard Station. They made me stand
at attention for about six hours straight.

And
it was then that they tore up your card?

Ah,
I’ve already told you about this, then. Yes, then the
Under-prefect came and said, “Watch what I’m going to do
with your embarkation card”. He tore it up into little pieces
and threw them in the garbage. And he said, “You are never
going to sail again on an Argentinean vessel.” And he was
right.

Had
you already registered at the School of Philosophy and
Humanities?

First
I registered in medicine, because I wanted to learn about the body
before learning about the soul. I passed my first year of medicine…and
I left medicine to enter philosophy. There I became acquainted with...
well, “they” came to speak to me about peronism! Peron had given
the School of Philosophy and Humanities over to Catholic Fundamentalism
and the Right, so you only saw Saint Thomas and Saint Augustine.
The CEU, Centro de Estudiantes Universitarios [University Students’
Center] were the peronists who dominated the School and kicked the
shit out of you. Their boss was Jorge Cesarsky,21 you remember...After
that, I continued with journalism until [eventually] I accepted
to go to Patagonia [with the Esquel22 newspaper]. I went with
a contract with the owner of the chain of newspapers of Chubut,23
who [contracted] me for the Esquel paper. I went there with all
my family, because I intended to stay for a few years. But right
after a year they kicked me out, the gendarmerie24
that is, because of my subversive articles, Because, they said,
Esquel was a border town. And so it was that I returned to Buenos
Aires as a sort of national journalistic hero, because they had
kicked me out and they had put me in the can. The day I arrived
in Buenos Aires I started working for the newspaper Clarín. Only
a short time afterwards, they elected me to be Adjunct Secretary
General of the Press Workers’ Syndicate and I immediately went on
to be the General Secretary, the journalists’ maximum commander.
There was also the Journalists’ Association, a minority union of
gorilas [reactionaries]. There, in the Syndicate, I learnt a lot.

Were
you independent within the union or did you belong to any
certain tendency?

No,
I belonged to a tendency..., there were two “lists”
[tendencies] in the union, one Blue and White,25 who were
right peronists on the absolute Right and more a group of
intelligence servicemen and collaborators, always mixed together
with the SIDE [Secretaría de Inteligencia del Estado, State
Intelligence Secretariat]. We were the Green List, the
independent list, formed out of radicales,26 socialists,
communists and anarchists. The list, because of the communists,
was introduced orders from the Central Committee [of the
Communist Party]...We carried out a lot of struggles…in the
assemblies and the interior of the country. I traveled
throughout the world and I was under arrest for 63 days. That
was in ´63, a little after Illia’d been elected [President of
Argentina] and took power on the 12th of October. I was arrested
during the dictatorship that had Guido as president, after the
milicos’ coup d’étàt, and I was under arrest from the 2nd
of Apriltill the
20th of June, in the women’s prison. After that, that was
everybody ’s joke with me! [he laughs] They had moved all the
women because there wasn’t enough room in the men’s prisons
- they were all full! In our pavilion there were seventeen
communists and two others. Well, I was there for 63 days. You
learn a lot... Well, after that my life went back to its normal
work, and little by little I started with my research projects.

When you
had gone to Esquel, was that your first contact with Patagonia?
Did you start to do research there?

Yes,
yes, mostly to collect data, because someone always appeared who
knew something. There was an old journalist and I once wrote an
article on him.The
Horse-back Journalist he was called and he wrote his articles on
horse back. He went to all the villages, always on horse back.
He has a really beautiful book. One day we’re going to do a
reproduction with some publisher. Any way, when I got back [from
Patagonia]... the communists really betrayed the posture we had
chosen, which was a completely independent one. They wanted to
bend it, twist it, and so finally I didn’t want to have
anything more to do with that [Green] list. I left it and
continued completely independently. At that time I was director
of a magazine called Imagen, a current events magazine of German
style, which went pretty well. But then the owner sold it to
Alberto J. Armando27 andto that son of a bitch of a painter, the one that always
has ads calling him the best painter, what’s his name?…Pérez
Celis, unbearable. I had to deal with him. He’s miserable,
egotistic, a horrible painter. I don’t know how he keeps
pulling off what he does. He’s considered to be the best
Argentinean painter, any way, let’s leave him. Well, I carried
on with my work there.

You were
still with the Clarín, you had started to work on Di Giovanni,
you’d collected all that material for La Patagonia.

Yes,
I started to work on Di Giovanni, and then the Clarín
positioned me as the Chief of Politics and one of my reporters
was named Félix Luna. So, one fine day he told me, “I want to
start a history magazine. Would you help me?” and I said,
“Yes, I’m very interested.” and he asked me, “What would
you like to do?” “I’d like to do research on the crimes of
the beginning of the century, really get into the nitty-gritty,
and describe it all.” And he said to me, “O.K., do it. But
do some history too.” And so I started to collaborate with the
magazine Todo es Historia. I signed the cop-and-robber articles
with a pen name and the other ones with mine. The first issue
started with the Palomar28 affair. I liked the topics where I
could still find the participants, not from the previous
century, where all you have left are the newspapers and
documents. I always liked doing research where I could find
people to interview. And in all the research work I found the
participants alive - the members of Di Giovanni’s group, the
members of the expropriator bands and groups. Absolutely
everybody of La Patagonia was still living, the soldiers were 62
years old. So all my historical articles are based on oral
testimony, except for one topic, which interested me very much,
which was the sinking of the Rosales, the only Argentinean ship
that sunk with the saving of all of the officers and the
drowning of all the other crew members. It was the first time
that the matter was researched. The
work on Di Giovanni appeared in two pretty long articles. After
that, the editor of the Galerna publishers called me to say,
“We’re going to publish a book [on Di Giovanni].” So I
told him I had tons of material and that I’d had to summarize
to fit all of it into the magazine. Then I started to put the
book together. It was among the highest sellers for 24 weeks, I
think.

It has to be
the historical number one best seller of the history in the
Argentinean press. I still see kids of 20 or so reading it as if
it were the Bible.

Yes,
it was, until it was prohibited by that son of a bitch, Lastiri,29 before Peron did it. And then began the whole
adventure with the film, which was going to be done on Di
Giovanni.

Did
you actually write a script?

Yes,
first with Roberto Bezza. Then there was Fabio [Leonardo Fabio,
movie director], who had it for ten years or more, and after
Fabio the famous Italian, the one who made “Christ Stopped at
Eboli”, Gino? I wish he’d made it. Just when he was about to
make it the bombing took place in Milan, a bomb in a bank that
killed sixteen people, and he said to me, “No, in no way are
we going to do the life of a terrorist.” Well, that’s the
way it stayed till I returned from exile…In the mean time
there was Fabio again, who spoke to me from Columbia. I remember
it was snowing in Germany and he phoned me at three in the
morning saying, “We’re going to do it on the Côte d’Azur,
it’s all set.” Imagine, what a title, “Severino Di
Giovanni on the Côte d’Azur” [he laughs]. After I got back
here in ´83 and Olivera [who had the rights after Fabio]
finally gave it up.

Why
did he give it up?

He
was really enthusiastic, we’d already started with the
wardrobe, everything was ready, with the script written and
everything else, and one day he phoned me and said, “Look
Osvaldo, I can’t do it.” I asked him, “Why not? Don’t
just tell me that.” And he answered, “Look, Severino’s a
nice terrorist and each time he places a bomb, the people in the
cinema are going to give him a tremendous applause. It’s going
to cause some really messy problems, and I’ve already had
enough of the experience of La Patagonia Rebelde [Rebellious
Patagonia]”

But it [the
movie] was the success of his life...

True,
but there was no way. And then who called me? Fabio, who had
every thing all ready. He described each scene to me,
everything... Well, after Fabio appeared Desanzo, the one who
did Evita. And I flatly refused him. He said, “I’ve got
great news, Bayer, Fabio’s just given me the rights.” I
asked him, “Who is Fabio to give the rights to you?” Desanzo
went on, “I’m really very happy, it’s the dream of my
life…” And I asked again, “Who is he to give you the
rights? Stop fucking around with me, don’t hassle me with this
stuff any more. That gentleman had no right! Keep yourself out
of these things...” Poor Desanzo... So, well, after Desanzo
nobody touched the stuff again, until the matter with Luis
Puenzo31 began...

Now
Luis Puenzo has the rights, is he considering filming?

I
don’t know. I hope not, because he’s trash.

Give us
your evaluation of the situation, today, half way through 2001.
What is the situation of progressive politics, of the Left, of
humanists faced with the offensive of the Right, of capitalism
at its most voracious point?

I’m
encouraged by the picketeers’ movement32
and by the movements of the campesinos and the unemployed. It’s
really curious, because they appear spontaneously... They are living
examples of the phenomenon of the [Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers
of the Disappeared)]. When there are demonstrations, people go into
the streets. It is as if the absolute and total defeat of ten years
ago had somehow been overcome. These movements are calling the attention
of the First World. The huge demonstrations against the World Trade
Organization, the system isn’t working. The system is finding absolutely
no solution to any problem either of the First World or of the Third
World...I have real confidence that we’re going to have a more and
more revolutionary climate! You see that the bourgeois parties don’t
know what to do. They change one guy, put in an other one, they
make ridiculous speeches... If you listened to the thing in Tucumán...,
it’s just one more radical speech, it seems like they’d looked for
one of Yrigoyen’s33 speeches…“All of us have to be united, all
of us have to be together...” Yeah! Who united, who?! “Unite! The
Mother Land is in danger!” Such stupidity, at least the peronists
put a little salt on things, they at least seem to be revolutionaries
when they speak...

One
sees more and more people who are excluded, marginalized. Those
who are integrated and who have an income are terrified of
loosing it, of loosing their integration. All the movements
which you have mentioned are all movements which have nothing to
do directly with production. You’ve mentioned the Madres and
the picketers, are they generally outside the system?

They’re
outside the system, in one way but in an other they’re the ones
who made the French Revolution, right? The ones who started to throw
stones, thinkers aside, the urban plebes. They threw stones and
started the whole thing. All the rest, you see, stayed back...Communism
has been defeated.Look,
socialism doesn’t exist any more - socialism as a party. The parties
which try to organize are organized by village priests who know
the poor and distribute food...or by the Right, isn’t it so? With
torturers who are recognized by the people and say, “These guys’re
tough and they’re going to kill the delinquents, right? Finally!”
That is how the Right thinks and there are more than a few of them…like
Bussi34 [General Domingo].

There is
always a public for the Right...

Always,
yes always. And especially when there’s some big danger, like now:
Cavallo35 falls and inflation will
take its toll. We will relive the last few months of Alfonsín’s36
presidency. And what will happen then? Then suddenly someone [will]
launche a proclamation, it could be Rico,37
Seineldín,38or Patti,39 or it could be Bussi again. You can just imagine
how the Avenida the Mayo,40 is going to be opened up so that they
can parade...And we thought that it had already finished, but it
hasn’t. At any moment, imagine - not the same ones as before – [a
military figure] makes a proclamation saying, “Ladies and Gentlemen,
this is chaos, the army has to keep vigil over the destiny of the
Mother Land.”…Any way, there’re people in the streets, yeah, people
in the streets...

Why anarchism today?

Well,
because libertarian socialism is the way...or as I prefer to
say, libertarian solidarism, that’s where we can find the
essence of a better world, the essence of a society formed from
the grass roots up, through the people’s discussion, the
protagonism of the people. That is the most beautiful poem of
all…Now, we have to be practical but one can think that
finally, after so many problems, humanity’s going to start to
think and ... the only way is by the people being the
protagonists within an enormous mutuality…

4 A
centrally located multi-laned avenue, the construction of which determined
the demolition of many city blocks.

5
Anarchist publication, opposed to La Protesta.

6
Secretary of edition of the anarchist daily, La Protesta, who,
according to most testimonies, was assassinated by Di Giovanni
in 1929 as corollary of an extensive ideological and political
battle fought in libertarian publications in Argentina. For further
details see Bayer’s book.

7
General secretary of the maritime workers’ union, one of the most
important of the workers’ movement of the ´20s and ´30s, as well
as being a well-known expropriator and proponent of direct action.

8
Rector of the University of La Plata and important militant of
the FACA.

9
Workers’ struggle against a British tannin company, which occupy
decades ofhistory
of the workers’ movement in Argentina.

10
América Scarfó, Di Giovanni´s adolescent lover.

11
Coastal town in the extreme South of continental Argentina.

12
Small city in northeastern Argentina on the River Paraná.

13
Small city in northern Patagonia.

14
Town in northeastern Argentina on the River Uruguay.

15
Largest city of northwestern Argentina.

16
Term used to designate the military coup d’étàt against the peronist
government on 16th of September, 1955, and the succeeding dictatorial
process, which lasted three years, until the results of the elections
of 1958.

17
The vice-president after the ultra-reactionary coup d’étàt of
December 1955, when he together with Aramburu dislodged moderate
military command, who had carried out the coup d’étàt in September,
from power.

18
Argentineans from the Province of Corrientes, on the River Paraná,
opposite Paraguay.

19
The national instrument of Paraguay, surprisingly similar to the
Celtic harp.

20
First large port upstream.

21
Famous rightist and leader of combat groups ofperonism of the right.

22
Town in west-central Patagonia.

23
Central province of Patagonia.

24
Border guard corps, who, presently, are the forces used throughout
the North and South of Argentina, in the province of Salta, for
example, specifically for the repression of the movements of popular
demands, and have thus abandoned the tasks they were originally
created to fulfill.

25
The colors of the Argentinean flag.

26
Members of the Partido Radical, the Radical Party, liberal bourgeois
party. Successive use of radical implies of the Partido Radical.

27
Conservative, populist president of Boca Juniors, the most popular
Football team of Argentina.

28
Famous case of corruption involving the donation of a large tract of land
to be used as the site for the National Military School, and its
subsequent fraudulent purchase and resale to the state, involving military
officers and radical politicians, and obviously huge quantities of money.

29
President of the House of Representatives, who in 1974 because of the
Campora’s renunciation,assumed
the Presidency of the Nation before Peron’s assumption

30
Bayer speaks about “la Strage di Piazza Fontana”. “It was a bomb in
the Banca Nazionale di Lavoro, in Piazza Fontana in Milan, December 1969.
It was in fact the bombing of which Pinelli was accused.” [Thanks Leslie
Ray, who gives me these data]

31
Director of the film The Official Story, Oscar award winner in the ‘80s.
Although good, it is based on“the
theory of the two demons” (Teoría de los dos demonios, the reactionary,
official view about the dictatorship years)

32
Movimiento de los piqueteros, a protest movement, of which the basic tool
is blocking the flow of traffic on roads and highways, which has gained
considerable strength in Argentina in the last ten years and which in July
of this year was declared illegal.

33
Radical, twice President of Argentina, removed from power in his second
term by the military coup d’étàt of 1930.

34
Appointed inspector-general of the province of Tucumán during the
military dictatorship, against whom the lawsuits for genocide and torture
have yet to be concluded, and who, nevertheless, was elected Governor of
Tucumán during the ´90s.

35
Neo-liberal “Chicago boy” (Milton Friedman disciple), President
of the Central Bank during the military dictatorship, Minister
of Economy under Ex-president Menem, present Minister ofEconomy in De la Rua’s radical government.

36
Hyperinflation and civil unrest.

37
Nazionalist military officer who stood out during the Malvinas-faulkland
Islands War.

38
Military companion of Rico’s, from whom he took distance upon
the arrival of Menem’s peronist government in 1989; imprisoned
for a frustrated coup d’étàt during the ´90s; these days maintains
relations with a chavista -so named after the Venezuelan general
Chávez- group within the army.

39
Ex-police official and torturer who received support from scared
sectors of the middle class who he convinced with the promise
of law and order during the campaign -which he won- for mayor
of Escobar, a small city in northern metropolitan Buenos Aires.

40
May Avenue, central avenue of Buenos Aires leading from Government
House and Plaza de Mayo to the Congress Building, which is used
for protests and demonstrations not for military parades.